Play, sport, and the creativity of sublimation: Understanding the importance of unimportant activities

BLACK, Jack (2024). Play, sport, and the creativity of sublimation: Understanding the importance of unimportant activities. In: BLACK, Jack and REYNOSO, Joseph S, (eds.) Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears. Lexington Books.

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Abstract

Understandings of play are frequently tied to a sense of instinctual gratification—a something that must be completed, that all humans, young or old, should or need to partake in. Indeed, for many, play is characterised as a unique activity that stands apart from the ordinary and every day. While such assessments prefigure a clear demarcation between the fun of play and the more laborious, boring aspects of profane life, what this distinction alludes to is a greater sense of the creativity that underlies play. Drawing from a Lacanian perspective, the following chapter will determine that an essential aspect of play and sport is the creativity it provides, namely, by considering how the act of creativity is intricately tied to the very lack that constitutes the Lacanian subject. To do so, the concept of sublimation is used to consider how the codified rules and regulations that sport both asserts and requires renders apparent the importance of the limit. Rather than conceiving of this limit as a barrier to creativity, what is revealed in sublimation is how this limit proves constitutive of our very creativity. That is, the ability to sublimate—to creatively perform unique displays of physical or artistic expression— lies in the mundanity and utter importance of the playful and sporting activity and, more importantly, the inherent restrictions and constraints these activities impose. It is in accordance with the limit that one’s creativity can expose an emancipatory potential in the context of play and sport.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Centre for Sport and Exercise Science; Sport Industry Research Centre; Sociology, Politics and Policy Research Group; Humanities Research Centre; Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute; Department of Sport; Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics; Department of Humanities; Department of Media Arts and Communication
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Elements
Depositing User:	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited:	17 Jul 2024 11:39
Last Modified:	17 Jul 2024 11:39
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/33965

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